Quarter 8 - Week 3

It has been an eventful week, the more prominent ones were unfortunately not the best we've had so far. A very well-liked professor passed away this week... one who has earned the deep respect that most of the students accorded to him. Personally, I've found him to be the most philosophical and abstract professor I've seen thus far. He was primarily attached to the Marketing discipline, but he seemed to have a special corner for Organizational Behaviour. He taught us Principle of Marketing in Quarter 3, and International Business Negotiation Skills in Quarter 6. A fine professor, whose voice emanated from his soul and touched ours as well.

The second event was the final event put forward by our seniors, who've made their peace with one another, and the college. Actually, I could live with this one... it's not so bad. They were taking up our seats in all the courses anyway. But they were pretty kind-hearted, they didn't want to bother any of us juniors, so they went ahead and put forward a send-off party for themselves, with events conducted by them for their families and professors. An interesting way to say bye to the college. Their presence, though abhorred, will be missed.

Ethics in Business Management

A problem with a course like EBM, is that it is really hard, I mean REALLY hard to agree on whether the judgement on a case was right or not. You see, on the one side it looks like the organization had the best intentions at heart, on the other it looks like they didn't do enough good of what they could do. So you actually have two camps in class, fighting each other on the fact that the accused was right/wrong on what they did. The case was that on Unocal and their decision to continue to pull oil from off of Burma's coast, and who had conveniently turned a blind eye when Burma's army was clearing away land from rebels when the pipeline had to go through that. The confusion was on whether Unocal was justified in claiming that they were ethical in their dealings, and were not involved when their partner, the Burmese government/army was doing this. In fact, they justified their presence by saying that they were providing health and education support in the region that was close to the pipeline, so they were actually doing a lot of good.

The prof must be finding it really hard as well. The guy is so sure, that "this party" did something wrong, or "that party" should be held responsible, and when he tries to explain his reasons to us, there is always atleast one bunch in the class that's disagreeing with him. And they proceed to explain why. The crescendo was reached when the prof was putting various tabulations on the board on who did what correctly/incorrectly, and you could see that he wanted to put four ticks in one box, but when he asked the class where to put it, the majority was on the other. You could see him struggling within his mind whether to correct the class again or not, but then he just sighed and put the four ticks on the other box, and three ticks in his. That was actually pretty sweet. Profs don't usually bend to the will of the class, but such is the nature of this subject.

The next day, he was better prepared. Didn't do as badly as the first session. Right at the start, he mentions that 'guys, we need to look at this objectively, keep your personal thoughts on the case aside, and ONLY look at it from the framework. You will have enough time to debate such topics long after. As you saw yesterday, even after twenty minutes of discussing this case, it is still just as, if not more gray than it was before we started. So stick to the framework.' Looks like the class got the message, because a few times when there was strong potential for disagreement, the class just kept quiet, as the framework made it clear as to where the balance tipped. The prof seemed to go home a happier man that day.

Happiness aside, the framework learnt this week was with regard to property rights. Apparently a bunch of our oldest philosophers had very different views on what constitutes right to property, ranging from John Locke to Karl Marx. And the case we discussed was that of the provision of treatment for AIDS in Africa. Funny case that... a few American companies came up with the cure but it was so friggin' costly for use in Africa and they weren't willing to subsidize it. Thanks to a loophole in Indian law, a few Robinhood pharma companies here went ahead and, ahem, built a cheap version of the drug and began distribution in association with Doctors across Borders. American companies yell "friggin' piracy", while Indian companies say "Cross-border disasters!". Being an Indian, I don't know, I couldn't help feeling proud of what these guys did! Was it wrong, well, I don't think so! Luckily, the framework kinda agrees!

Managing Off-shored Software and IT Services

Profs tend to be pretty good at predicting what the class is capable of. Last week, when this one asked how many of us read the case, only two hands went up. So he thought, ok, these guys are not going to read what I give them, so let me just give them a micro-case this week. So when he comes to class, fully prepared to see the same two hands when he asks "who read the case?" imagine his amazement when all the hands go up. I swear, he was so happy! If only there were tears of joy, but alas, there weren't. Totally would have made for a good Bollywood movie. It isn't lost on me that the students actually should be insulted that the prof thinks we don't read cases, but hell, it was such a happy moment.

The class dealt with the different phases of outsourcing, and how the balance of power tends to shift along the duration of the partnership, and the micro case given dealt with something similar. The second session was more to do with how you should control intellectual activity like software development, against how you would control manual activity like factory production. The various types of control systems were being discussed and the typical pros/cons of the same. The class came about lively here, as they were talking of the different ways that their company uses to handle such situations, especially when the customer wants to manage the resources directly, but their company resents external control of their own resources. Kind of portrays to anyone outside that the company is incapable of managing its resources effectively. Doesn't go down well with Indians now, does it?

A very interesting week with a lot of ground covered. I'm already beginning to enjoy this quarter.

Quarter 8 - Week 2

The corridors are a little quieter, they're a little more spacious. With a couple of the batches graduating and far fewer of the 2008 batch amongst us, there's almost a little dulling of the energy around us. Oh well, lesser hustle and bustle at the tea shop and lunch counter for us. Every cloud, silver lining, therefore profit etc... blah, blah.

Ethics in Business Management

The first session was a continuation from the last one, on the basics of ethics and a simple framework. We were trying our hands out on a case, that of Enron, to figure out if what happened was ethical or not, and who was to blame. After pulling it a bit here and there, the class almost came to a consensus that the founder was the person who was most to blame (no surprise there, but hey, we applied a framework... what did you apply? Common sense, sheesh, mere mortal!)

The second session brought back some reality to the class room. The prof asks "How many people go through the readings?", and a few hands slowly climb up in the air. The vast majority on the other hand is studiously examining their notes, or name badges, as going through that will undoubtedly bring us the knowledge from the readings. The prof is obviously less than amused, and in a good-humored manner makes us all stand up... hold our right hands in the air... and solemnly take a vow to read all cases in this course henceforth. I don't know about the others, but I'm now actually motivated to read the case! Now to see what comes first, integrity or sloth! Coming away from all such things, the learnings from the day involved understanding the different views of ethics, and how they've evolved. How it's possible to look at a particular scenario from multiple views, and then come to a more informed conclusion on whether or not the route taken to the decision was fair, and just.

Managing Off-shored Software and IT Services

For the first session, we had two REALLY big cases to go through. And I can understand why, they're apparently Mega-Contracts. It was very interesting to see the nuances that people go through when they're trying to form a long term partnership or contractual agreement. The levels of bargaining, the bi-yearly refinements to the contract, the advantages and disadvantages of off-shoring tasks, and how to choose when to offshore them. All of these make for very interesting readings.

The second session was more to do with understanding contracts and services from a financial angle. For e.g. what are the possible long term effects from doing off-shoring, like is it possible that the other party might be in a far stronger position than you're in right now, to almost take advantage of you... or if this is a service that you require frequently, in which case you MAY be better off in acquiring the company itself. A lot of interesting nuances, and views on these, based on which yet another framework determined what we should look at when we try to off-shore or acquire a company.

The week belonged to frameworks, showing us how to use particular frameworks. I just worry that we might take these frameworks too seriously, too seriously and miss the evolving market out there. At least it's encouraging to know that we don't accept such frameworks easily. If there's one thing that we've learnt at the IIMB, it is to question. Question carefully, and choose the right question. For that will bring you the answer. And so endeth the drowsy midnight lesson.

Quarter 8 - Week 1

The last quarter for the year, and it feels like I'm on the cusp of something huge. I would have completed two years by May this year. That's.... some... accomplishment! I've taken a lighter load this quarter, two subjects and one project. So it feels a lot more aaraam-se compared to the other quarters. Traditionally, Q4 has always been the "soft quarter", the courses are more the pondering-types rather than the hard-theoritical types. My choices reflect the type of courses offered this time around...

Ethics in Business Management

I've always been told that Ethics can't be taught, it is imbibed, mostly in your formative years. I look at it a little differently. A person would take a course on ethics under two circumstances. 1. He wants to understand ethics more deeply, so he can be a better person morally. 2. He wants to break the rules, and is looking for practical loopholes. I like to think that I fall under the former category! :D

We've already done one case study on Ethics, it was based on slavery in the Chocolate industry. Apparently, 50% of the world's production of cocoa beans happen in Ghana and on the Ivory Coast. And the labour is mostly children, who have been enslaved after being kidnapped at a young age. Their living conditions are atrocious, and their plights miserable. So, after a lot of hullabaloo, people covered the event in major newspapers and television broadcast, and the case ends with a statement of the current status. Apparently people still buy chocolate.

We followed it up with an analysis using a framework that was taught. And we found, that except for the poor kids who were enslaved, everyone else, including the chocolate farmers, traders, bigtime US chocolate manufacturers, retail and distribution and the regular global consumer were ALL morally responsible for the unfortunate events. So the prof concludes saying that everyone has a choice to buy stuff, and you could choose not to buy, but even then many times, people continue to buy shirking off their moral responsibility. Additionally, what seems unethical to us, might seem all right to people in that condition. So it's not fair to look at ethics through a single lens, you need to apply it to the region and its customs, and then decide what actions should be taken.

Managing Off-Shored Software and IT services

A slightly more soporific course that seems to cover how we're doing currently in the off-shored space and what we can do to better manage it. We started with a simple understanding of which countries are known better for what type of outsourced/offshored activity. Our second session while focussing around this topic, ended with an understanding of India's competitive advantage, and if it is possible for us to sustain it. You'd be surprised at the result we arrived at! ;)

Here's to looking forward to a chilled-out quarter, with chilled-out activity. All assignments are individual, for the first time ever! Looks like this can be a nice fun quarter after all! Who says you can't relax at the IIMB?